Matt Browne

The SDBloggers met last night to discuss their blogging experiences. We had all types of bloggers represented from larger corporate blogs like MindTouch and Hitachi to personal bloggers such as Jenn Van Grove and Chris Rodgers.

San Diego Bloggers meet once a month to network, share experiences, hopefully learn something, challenge each other, support our articles and initiatives, discuss local events, and above all else have fun.

Is your company interested in sponsoring a future event, please visit: http://sdbloggers.1landing.com/ and let your interest be known.

We are excited to announce that we are beginning the rebranding process for Integral Impressions. Even more exciting, we are going to blog about the entire rebranding process. You are going to see our deadlines, mocks, comps, debates, reasoning, and our approach- complete transparency via our blog.

One caveat, we want, and need your feedback. We’d like to hear what you like and what you don’t. Guide us, share your wisdom, and partake in a really cool rebranding experiment as it unfolds.

Please help us tweet, tag, hashtag, digg, stumble, reddit anything along the way you find interesting. We are going to be using the tag ‘integralrebrand’ or #integralrebrand (for twitter).

StartupSD was created to connect the Web community in San Diego as a platform for news, events and collaboration.

Anyone leveraging the New Web philosophy in design, marketing, development, strategy should submit news or events by contacting us. We are committed to quality content and events, so be sure to take put a little effort into crafting your submissions and requests- it will go a long way.

Background: I am involved with StartupSD as a blogger and tech adviser. Chuck Longanecker founded the group. Learn more about the group here. Be sure to grab the RSS feed to stay up to date.

Mixergy is a web service that helps you collaborate with other hosts to organize events and manage reservations. Mixergy was founded by Andrew Warner, a serial entrepreneur with experience in launching, selling, and running a successful businesses. During my call today, Andrew stood out as a leader that makes a point to take initiative and create opportunities for his business.

Mixergy was created out of the desire to bring together like minded communities for networking locally. Though most of the initial ‘mixing’ or networking happens before the actual event, Andrew emphasizes the importance of connecting in-person too. “After I looked at the landscape of event reservation software, I found a unique opportunity to build something very different,” Andrew stated.

Mixergy is different because it pulls multiple organizers together to host the same event (without them sharing each other’s contacts), which allows for maximum impact and exposure for companies co-hosting the same event.

What started as a side hobby for Andrew, has now grown into an emerging brand that has taken a life of its own.

Hosting an event of your own couldn’t be easier- just head over to mixergy.com and signup today. If you’d like to cohost an event with Andrew (similar to what we did with Happy Hour 2.0), please connect with him via his blog and he’d be happy to organize something.

This was the first published interview in a series of posts I am conducting with web leaders, locally and nationally. My goal is to connect with accomplished entrepreneurs in the web industry and share their winning formula with my readers. Hearing the stories behind the emerging brands directly from the leaders, I hope, will give an added dimension to understanding what makes them (and hopefully you) successful.

Audio Interview of Andrew Warner using Utterz.

I am starting a series of posts profiling local bloggers and leaders in social technology. I want to get to know more about you, your blog, inspiration for your posts, and what you are doing next. If you are interested in talking with me for 30 minutes- 10 of which I will record to accompany the post, then I would like to speak with you.

In the mean time, for your reference, here is a list of some of the local bloggers that attended SDBloggers Meetup and that I hope to be interviewing over the next few weeks.

• tonybalsamo.com [Future Blogger, Real-Estate]
• whisperbuzz [Luke Pilon, Photography & Glass Blowing]
• sneakeracademy.com [Jessica McKimmie, Marketing]
• thesandiegotraveler.com [Carol Lane, Travel]
• obraq.org [Patty Jones, Ocean Beach News & Commentary]
• revolutionarymayor.com [Eric Bidwell, San Diego Mayoral Candidate]
• www.higherpassages.com [John
• shycloud.com [David Matt Green, Photography]
• msdigital.smugmug.com [Linda. Photography]
• sdmegacoalition.blogspot.com [Walter Davis, San Diego Community/Groups]
• enrique-gutierrez.com [Enrique Gutierrez, Philosophy, Photography and a myriad of other subjects]
• gwaveconsulting.com [Melanie Gordon, Marketing Consulting]
• www.sandiegogaslampandnightlife.com [Richie Edquid, San Diego Nightlife]
• edward.oconnor.cx [Edward O’Connor, Web Developer/Django]
• erin.oconnor.cx & snowclones.org [Erin O’Connor, Art/Linguistics]
• www.thaumatocracy.com [Dan Tentler, Photography/Hacks]
• blogworldexpo.com [Rick Calvert & Dave Cynkin, Co-Founders - group discount potential!]
• ducksnorts.com & www.knucklecurve.com [Geoff Young, Padres/Baseball]
• www.declan.net & eringoblog.declan.net [Declan Fleming & his daughter Erin, Family/Photography/Tech/San Diego]
• www.barcampsandiego.org [Dan Tentler, Patrick Crowley - Barcamp San Diego Unconference]
• www.jefferygordon.com [Jeff “Flash” Gordon, Photography/Books]
• binarywolf.com [Steve, Personal Interest]
• jacobbijani.com [Jacob Bijani]
• friarfaithful.com [Dominic Damian, Padres]
• grokz.com [Peter, blog coming soon]

We just wrapped another ‘Blogger Meetup’ for San Diego which was a great success. Thanks to all of the local bloggers that came out tonight, especially those tolerating traffic laden drives ranging from Vista to Carlsbad just to join us. I appreciate your participation in this event!

The format of this evening’s event was centered around networking. Each member had an opportunity to introduce their blog to the group and explain the focus of their posts. We each took a minute (about 30 total) to introduce our blogs, market new blogs, or promote specific articles.

Jenn, our assistant organizer, posted a list of local bloggers in attendance. In addition, I’d like to dedicate a series of posts picking up where this event left off, interviewing local bloggers. I am going to commit to doing 3 posts (or Utterz) per week showcasing San Diego bloggers and what they are up to. Connect with me on Twitter, if you’d like to talk.

The meeting got off to a late start because David’s Coffee Shop doubled booked the meeting room til 7:30pm, so we had to deal. As it worked out, many local bloggers showed up about that time anyway. Hence, I am going to move the meeting time to 7:30pm for future events.

We are looking for a new location for the next meeting, so please comment if you have any ideas. It is important our new venue can support a presentation for 30-40 people, while still being a friendly, semi-private environment that inspires conversation.

It has been great to see the group mature over the last 6 months. I think we are on our way to building a powerful community that will be an asset to all of us. If you have been thinking about checking our group out for the first time, please join us on April 29th for our next meeting.

‘Blog & Article Marketing’ is the topic for next month’s meeting, followed by a discussion from the group. We are looking for sponsors for future events, please email me if you are interested.

Don’t forget to check out SDBloggers.com to stay up to date with the San Diego blogging community. For our members, please tag your assets and articles with “sdbloggers” & “startupsd.“

First and foremost thanks to Andrew Warner, dt, and Modus Bar. Andrew brought the crowd and the culture, Modus provided kick ass refreshments and ambiance, and dt helped us organize and promote the event.

We were pleased with the overall feedback we’ve gotten. We are also happy to have facilitated a strong networking event for all that participated.

As Chuck from dt advocates, “these events aren’t just about networking, they are about connecting,” going beyond the simple exchange of a business card- by doing so, we hope that we provided a environment that allowed us all to connect with our web neighbors.

By hosting this event we were doing our part to help bring together the social web community in San Diego.

A few honorable mentions from last night- thank you to @viss for your great photography during the event. We were pleased to be interviewed by TechZulu.com, the video is coming soon. Another thanks to InsideTheRabbitHole.com for their post event summary.

For our next event, check us out at SDBloggers.com for our monthly local blogger meetup. Be sure to check out the Facebook group for a great source of local events.

And if you’d like to have an event of your own at Modus, please contact Modus Bar.